CHAPTER XV. P. I.

THE AUTHOR VENTURES AN OPINION AGAINST THE PREVAILING WISDOM OF MAKING CHILDREN PREMATURELY WISE.

“What, Sir,” exclaims a Lady, who is bluer than ever one of her naked and woad-stained ancestors appeared at a public festival in full dye,—“what, Sir, do you tell us that children are not to be made to understand what they are taught?” And she casts her eyes complacently toward an assortment of those books which so many writers, male and female, some of the infidel, some of the semi-fidel, and some of the super-fidel schools have composed for the laudable purpose of enabling children to understand every thing.—“What, Sir,” she repeats, “are we to make our children learn things by rote like parrots, and fill their heads with words to which they cannot attach any signification?”

“Yes, Madam, in very many cases.”

“I should like, Sir, to be instructed why?”

She says this in a tone, and with an expression both of eyes and lips which plainly show, in direct opposition to the words, that the Lady thinks herself much fitter to instruct, than to be instructed. It is not her fault. She is a good woman, and naturally a sensible one, but she has been trained up in the way women should not go. She has been carried from lecture to lecture, like a student who is being crammed at a Scotch University. She has attended lectures on chemistry, lectures on poetry, lectures on phrenology, lectures on mnemonics; she has read the latest and most applauded essays on Taste: she has studied the newest and most approved treatises practical and theoretical upon Education: she has paid sufficient attention to metaphysics to know as much as a professed philosopher about matter and spirit; she is a proficient in political economy, and can discourse upon the new science of population. Poor Lady, it would require large draughts of Lethe to clear out all this undigested and undigestible trash, and fit her for becoming what she might have been! Upon this point however it may be practicable to set her right.

“You are a mother, Madam, and a good one. In caressing your infants you may perhaps think it unphilosophical to use what I should call the proper and natural language of the nursery. But doubtless you talk to them; you give some utterance to your feelings; and whether that utterance be in legitimate and wise words, or in good extemporaneous nonsense it is alike to the child. The conventional words convey no more meaning to him than the mere sound; but he understands from either all that is meant, all that you wish him to understand, all that is to be understood. He knows that it is an expression of your love and tenderness, and that he is the object of it.

“So too it continues after he is advanced from infancy into childhood. When children are beginning to speak they do not and cannot affix any meaning to half the words which they hear; yet they learn their mother tongue. What I say is, do not attempt to force their intellectual growth. Do not feed them with meat till they have teeth to masticate it.

“There is a great deal which they ought to learn, can learn, and must learn, before they can or ought to understand it. How many questions must you have heard from them which you have felt to be best answered, when they were with most dexterity put aside! Let me tell you a story which the Jesuit Manuel de Vergara used to tell of himself. When he was a little boy he asked a Dominican Friar what was the meaning of the seventh commandment, for he said he could not tell what committing adultery was. The Friar not knowing how to answer, cast a perplexed look round the room, and thinking he had found a safe reply pointed to a kettle on the fire, and said the Commandment meant that he must never put his hand in the pot while it was boiling. The very next day, a loud scream alarmed the family, and behold there was little Manuel running about the room holding up his scalded finger, and exclaiming ‘Oh dear, oh dear, I've committed adultery! I've committed adultery! I've committed adultery!’”